The term, 'A stitch in time saves nine' is an old metaphor that encourages us to sew up the small holes or tears in a piece of material, so saving the need for more stitching at a later date when the hole has become larger.
Clearly the first users of this expression were referring to saving extra work and stress by taking the initiative to work on the small things. I’ll call this, ‘working smart’.
Term 2 is typically a sustained period of ‘work’; important content and skills are covered and most of the Carnivals and Camps have been completed. There is typically a steady stream of assessments, homework, and preparation for examinations. This demands that students stay on task, complete all the homework, and do their best to meet the set criteria.
Procrastination is one of the enemies of success at this point. This simply means that their is a risk when we delay getting to the task at hand. ‘I’ll do it later’, ‘It’s not really important… I can do that next week’, ‘Mr Bloggs never checks the homework, so I don’t think I need to do that tonight’… ‘ I have training and I just don’t have the time’. These are typical conversations that we have with ourselves, and these typical comments side-track us from achieving excellent outcomes. However, the real danger is not just achieving our best outcome, procrastination eventually means that students put pressure on themselves as the deadline looms. This pressure then creates a sense of anxiety and may even lead to possible absences or escalating behaviour/ or avoidance issues. The problem or the ‘rip in the material’ gets serious.
Our encouragement for every student is to ‘work smart’. Working smart looks like a consistent pattern of behaviour that eliminates unnecessary steps and avoids procrastination. Working smart includes things like:
- Prioritising the tasks required to do for the week; keeping the most important task at the forefront of your mind.
- Set clear goals for the week - Make a daily ‘to do list’ that assists in achieving the must do tasks.
- Reducing distractions. This means an intentional plan around phones/ technology/ hobbies or tv programs etc
- Establish a daily/ weekly timetable or planner for study and work out the practical plan for completing each task
- Take a regular break rather than trying to work tired.
- Make sure you are getting good sleep: Our Senior students have undertaken a workshop on this and if a student is not sleeping well then it makes it very difficult to work with any efficiency.
- Eat well and exercise regularly.
- Work with the teacher: Most teachers will be thrilled to assist you to master skills and content especially if you are coming to class with a positive disposition.
- Small consistent bites will get the task completed with a sense of satisfaction.
There are more steps that we could list and more detail that we could give but my point here is ‘working smart’ now, saves us from major repairs later on.
Let’s have a great term
